“Don’t pick at your peckled face!”, was my dad’s admonition regarding my acne, which he promulgated -- as the local general practitioner -- to be an anthropogenic condition caused by touching one’s face with filthy hands, and which he thought could be prevented by activities which promoted hand washing and kept one’s hands away from one’s face, such as kneading and baking bread, or by receiving a cumshaw such as a musical instrument, which would keep one’s hands occupied in a wholesome pursuit.

If the conference was peckled with climate change skeptics, that was only because an attending oil executive had promulgated his views by offering cumshaw to anyone who would join him in denying the possibility of anthropogenic warming.

Be careful, for if you give the commander a small cumshaw he will let you promulgate your ideas during morning announcements, but after you explain how war is not anthropogenic and we are just pawns in the grand battle started by the Mighty Unicorns fighting the tyranny of the Aged Orcs, there will be hundreds of soldiers in peckled camouflage ready to have your head.

Standing here - peckled o'er with senescent maculation - before such an august assembly of peers, I am loath to promulgate my cause, fearing your timeous rebuff that in further venting my halitosis I shall be rebuked for contumacious anthropogenic pollution - unless, perchance, having already investigated the cumshaw bag of goodies found beneath your seats, you can find it in your hearts once again to sanction my tendentious prolixity.

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